“Ways of Worldmaking” at The National Museum of Art, Osaka

The National Museum of Art, Osaka is currently presenting an exhibition “Ways of Worldmaking” which showcases recent works by emerging nine artists and groups. The museum’s continued dedication to contemporary art delivered this unique group exhibition of artists who are developing their very own styles.

The first work you meet is Onishi Yasuaki’s “reverse of volume”. A huge white half-translucent polyethylene sheet hanged with innumerable black threads of glue. Light and shadows created by the work are simply beautiful but somewhat ominous.

paramodel’s “paramodelic graffiti” is a graffiti-like installation using plastic model train tracks called Plarail. Here the artist emphasized it is a “work-in-progress” and this gives me the feeling like it keeps multiplying by itself.

Aoki Ryoko and Ito Zon “The state one reaches by the age of 9″ 2011, Courtesy of the artist, photo: Kazuo Fukunaga

Aoki Ryoko and Ito Zon collaborated to create video installations display endlessly transforming images. They are working on styles of drawing and embroidery respectively.

Golden booth filled with extremely vivid light and colors is composed by Kito Kengo. His work has a power to convey some kind of sensory overload to visitors. Kaneuji Teppei uses daily commodities as medium of expression. It becomes a pleasure also for us to reveal hidden beauty in the ordinal objects.

Next three artists present their works in the dark. exonemo is evolving various methods to expose phenomena happened between information technology and users. In “Got, Exists.”, a display keeps showing fast scrolling twitter time-line with replacing the text GOD with GOT.

Kuwakubo Ryota’s work attracted much attention from visitors. This installation takes 13 minutes to complete, but no one left the booth until it finished. One small modeltrain and LED light generate the images enfolding us all in the room. Maybe this work is totally new and never done before installation.

What Kido Junko wants to show us is something formless such as moving wind, shadows appeared in the dark and light through glass or water. She devises the method of describing those “sign” or “atmosphere” in her works. Handa Masanori is another artist who is exploring diverse modes of expression. He exhibits tiles which are geometrically laid out and covered in buttermilk.

Museum building was designed by Argentine architect César Pelli. Most of the facilities were installed underground, however, only the entrance is exposed outside. Wing shaped steel frames become a landmark of the riverside area. [left] paramodel’s work is about to spread over the exhibition title board. [right]